Shamanistic remnants in Hungarian folklore
Encyclopedia
Comparative methods
used in analysing ethnographic
data of Hungarian folktales
, and some historical sources (e.g. files of witch trial
s) reveal that some features of Hungarian folklore are remnants of shamanistic
beliefs, maintained from the deep past, or possibly borrowed from Turkic peoples
with whom Hungarians used to live together before having wandered to the Pannonian Basin
; or maybe is an effect of Eastern influence thereafter (Cuman immigration).
These remnants are partly conserved as fragments by some features of customs and beliefs, for example
There were also people who filled in similar roles to those performed by shamans among other peoples: fortune-telling
, weather magic, finding lost objects. These people can be related to shamanism (contrasted to the cunning folk
of non-shamanistic cultures), because the former are recorded to go through similar experiences to those of many shamans: being born with surplus amount of bones or teeth, illness, dismemberment
by a mythological being, recovering with enlarged increased capabilities, struggle with other shamans or beings.
Related features can be recognized in several examples of shamanism in Siberia. As Hungarian language
belongs to the Uralic family
, we can expect to find them among Uralic peoples. Some of them maintained shamanism until the modern times. Especially the isolated location of Nganasan people
enabled that shamanism was a living phenomenon among them even in the beginning of 20th century, the last notable Nganasan shaman's seances could be recorded on film in the 1970s. The original location of the Proto-Uralic
peoples (and its extent) is debated. The combined results of several sciences suggest that this area was north of Central Ural Mountains
and on lower and middle parts of Ob River
. This approach combined ecological, namely phytogeographical
and paleobotanic
(including palynological
) data together with linguistic (phytonymic and comparative
) considerations: the distribution of various tree species in Siberia and Eastern Europe (changing in time) was matched against the distribution of the respective tree-names in various Uralic languages (filtered with comparative methods, so that only names of Proto-Uralic
or Proto-Finno-Ugric relevance be taken into account).
can be observed in several cultures, in many variations: people are believed to have more than one soul. Examples can be found in several North Eurasian cultures, in some Eskimo groups; at majority of Finno-Ugric peoples
, among Hungarians as well. Some of the many examples distinguishes two souls: a body soul for maintaining bodily functions, and a free soul which can leave the body (even during life), but as mentioned, such beliefs are diverse.
In some cultures, it may be related to shamanistic
concepts. In shamanistic beliefs of some Eskimo groups
, the shaman's "spirit journey" with his helping spirits to remote places is explained with such souls concepts. It is the shaman's free soul that leaves his body. According to an explanation, this temporal absence of the shaman's free soul is tacked by a substitution: the shaman's body is guarded by one of his/her helping spirits during the spirit journey, also a tale contains this motif
while describing a spirit journey undertaken by the shaman's free soul and his helping spirits.
As mentioned, it could be observed also among Hungarians. The body soul, lélek was related to breathing (can be seen also by etymology). The shadow soul called íz was related to the roaming soul of the dead. Its feared nature can bee seen, as it features also in curse
expressions: “Vigyen el az íz!” (= “the shadow soul take you!”). This curse is unknown for most people nowadays, and word "íz" (in this meaning) is also unknown, or felt as an archaism
with forgotten meaning.
Terebess Ázsia E-Tár:
Magyar Néprajz:
:
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
used in analysing ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
data of Hungarian folktales
Hungarian mythology
Hungarian mythology includes the myths, legends, folk tales, fairy tales and gods of the Hungarians. Many parts of it are thought to be lost, i.e. only some texts remained which can be classified as a myth. However, a significant amount of Hungarian mythology was successfully recovered in the last...
, and some historical sources (e.g. files of witch trial
Witch trial
A witch trial is a legal proceeding that is part of a witch-hunt. * Witch trials in Early Modern Europe, 15th–18th centuries** Salzburg witch trials - 1675-1690, Salzburg, Austria** Spa witch trial - 1616, Belgium...
s) reveal that some features of Hungarian folklore are remnants of shamanistic
Shamanism
Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...
beliefs, maintained from the deep past, or possibly borrowed from Turkic peoples
Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are peoples residing in northern, central and western Asia, southern Siberia and northwestern China and parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds...
with whom Hungarians used to live together before having wandered to the Pannonian Basin
Pannonian Basin
The Pannonian Basin or Carpathian Basin is a large basin in East-Central Europe.The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense - meaning only the lowlands, the plain that remained when the Pliocene Pannonian Sea dried...
; or maybe is an effect of Eastern influence thereafter (Cuman immigration).
These remnants are partly conserved as fragments by some features of customs and beliefs, for example
- refrainRefrainA refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...
s of certain folksongTraditional musicTraditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
s accompanying some customs, - certain motifs of folktales, e.g. sky-reaching treeÉgig éro faThe world tree , is a typical element of Hungarian folk art and folk tales and a distinct folk tale type. In Hungarian it has several other descriptive names like "Égig érő fa" , "tetejetlen fa" , "életfa" .Several of these tales have versions in the Transylvanian, German, Romanian,...
, which was a specific belief among several Uralic peoples, having some resemblances to the world treeWorld treeThe world tree is a motif present in several religions and mythologies, particularly Indo-European religions, Siberian religions, and Native American religions. The world tree is represented as a colossal tree which supports the heavens, thereby connecting the heavens, the earth, and, through its...
concept, but it was also related to the shaman's tree and had some other peculiarities as well
There were also people who filled in similar roles to those performed by shamans among other peoples: fortune-telling
Fortune-telling
Fortune-telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. The scope of fortune-telling is in principle identical with the practice of divination...
, weather magic, finding lost objects. These people can be related to shamanism (contrasted to the cunning folk
Cunning folk
The cunning folk in Britain were professional or semi-professional practitioners of magic active from the Medieval period through to the early twentieth century. As cunning folk, they practised folk magic – also known as "low magic" – although often combined with elements of "high" or ceremonial...
of non-shamanistic cultures), because the former are recorded to go through similar experiences to those of many shamans: being born with surplus amount of bones or teeth, illness, dismemberment
Dismemberment
Dismemberment is the act of cutting, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise removing, the limbs of a living thing. It may be practiced upon human beings as a form of capital punishment, as a result of a traumatic accident, or in connection with murder, suicide, or cannibalism...
by a mythological being, recovering with enlarged increased capabilities, struggle with other shamans or beings.
Related features can be recognized in several examples of shamanism in Siberia. As Hungarian language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
belongs to the Uralic family
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
, we can expect to find them among Uralic peoples. Some of them maintained shamanism until the modern times. Especially the isolated location of Nganasan people
Nganasan people
The Nganasans are one of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. They are the northernmost of the Samoyedic peoples, living on the Taymyr Peninsula by the Arctic Ocean. Their territory is part of Krasnoyarsk Krai. Their "capital" is the settlement of Ust-Avam...
enabled that shamanism was a living phenomenon among them even in the beginning of 20th century, the last notable Nganasan shaman's seances could be recorded on film in the 1970s. The original location of the Proto-Uralic
Proto-Uralic language
Proto-Uralic is the hypothetical language ancestral to the Uralic language family. The language was originally spoken in a small area in about 7000-2000 BC , and expanded to give differentiated protolanguages. The exact location of the area or Urheimat is not known, but the vicinity of the Ural...
peoples (and its extent) is debated. The combined results of several sciences suggest that this area was north of Central Ural Mountains
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...
and on lower and middle parts of Ob River
Ob River
The Ob River , also Obi, is a major river in western Siberia, Russia and is the world's seventh longest river. It is the westernmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean .The Gulf of Ob is the world's longest estuary.-Names:The Ob is known to the Khanty people as the...
. This approach combined ecological, namely phytogeographical
Phytogeography
Phytogeography , also called geobotany, is the branch of biogeography that is concerned with the geographic distribution of plant species...
and paleobotanic
Paleobotany
Paleobotany, also spelled as palaeobotany , is the branch of paleontology or paleobiology dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments , and both the evolutionary history of plants, with a...
(including palynological
Palynology
Palynology is the science that studies contemporary and fossil palynomorphs, including pollen, spores, orbicules, dinoflagellate cysts, acritarchs, chitinozoans and scolecodonts, together with particulate organic matter and kerogen found in sedimentary rocks and sediments...
) data together with linguistic (phytonymic and comparative
Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
) considerations: the distribution of various tree species in Siberia and Eastern Europe (changing in time) was matched against the distribution of the respective tree-names in various Uralic languages (filtered with comparative methods, so that only names of Proto-Uralic
Proto-Uralic language
Proto-Uralic is the hypothetical language ancestral to the Uralic language family. The language was originally spoken in a small area in about 7000-2000 BC , and expanded to give differentiated protolanguages. The exact location of the area or Urheimat is not known, but the vicinity of the Ural...
or Proto-Finno-Ugric relevance be taken into account).
Artifacts
Some artifacts, see online available pictures and descriptions:- Sky-reaching treeÉgig éro faThe world tree , is a typical element of Hungarian folk art and folk tales and a distinct folk tale type. In Hungarian it has several other descriptive names like "Égig érő fa" , "tetejetlen fa" , "életfa" .Several of these tales have versions in the Transylvanian, German, Romanian,...
standing on a hill, with celestial body on top left part, and cattle on both lower and upper levels. (Diószegi Vilmos recognizes also a shaman ladder on the image.) Decoration of a horn saltcellar, collected in BiharnagybajomBiharnagybajomBiharnagybajom is a village in Hajdú-Bihar county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary. It has a population of 3100 people and was built on a flood plain....
village of Hajdú-BiharHajdú-BiharHajdú-Bihar is an administrative county in eastern Hungary, on the border with Romania. It shares borders with the Hungarian counties Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok and Békés. The capital of Hajdú-Bihar county is Debrecen...
county. The figure about the artifact (together with other related ones) is drawn by Szűcs Sándor ethnographer. See online. - Combat of two táltos people (both in the guise of bulls). Decoration on corn saltcellar. Collected in Sárrét. The figure about the artifact is drawn by Szűcs Sándor ethnographer. See online. Another image depicts táltos people fighting as black and white bulls, one of them helped by a man. Drawn by Dudás Juló, Galgamácsa. Not online.
Soul dualism
Soul dualismSoul dualism
Soul dualism or a dualistic soul concept is a range of beliefs that a person has two kinds of souls. In many cases, one of the souls is associated with body functions and the other one can leave the body . Sometimes the plethora of soul types can be even more complex...
can be observed in several cultures, in many variations: people are believed to have more than one soul. Examples can be found in several North Eurasian cultures, in some Eskimo groups; at majority of Finno-Ugric peoples
Finno-Ugric peoples
The Finno-Ugric peoples are any of several peoples of Europe who speak languages of the proposed Finno-Ugric language family, such as the Finns, Estonians, Mordvins, and Hungarians...
, among Hungarians as well. Some of the many examples distinguishes two souls: a body soul for maintaining bodily functions, and a free soul which can leave the body (even during life), but as mentioned, such beliefs are diverse.
In some cultures, it may be related to shamanistic
Shamanism
Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...
concepts. In shamanistic beliefs of some Eskimo groups
Shamanism among Eskimo peoples
Shamanism among Eskimo peoples refers to those aspects of the various Eskimo cultures that are related to the shamans’ role as a mediator between people and spirits, souls, and mythological beings...
, the shaman's "spirit journey" with his helping spirits to remote places is explained with such souls concepts. It is the shaman's free soul that leaves his body. According to an explanation, this temporal absence of the shaman's free soul is tacked by a substitution: the shaman's body is guarded by one of his/her helping spirits during the spirit journey, also a tale contains this motif
Motif (narrative)
In narrative, a motif is any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. Through its repetition, a motif can help produce other narrative aspects such as theme or mood....
while describing a spirit journey undertaken by the shaman's free soul and his helping spirits.
As mentioned, it could be observed also among Hungarians. The body soul, lélek was related to breathing (can be seen also by etymology). The shadow soul called íz was related to the roaming soul of the dead. Its feared nature can bee seen, as it features also in curse
Curse
A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to some other entity—one or more persons, a place, or an object...
expressions: “Vigyen el az íz!” (= “the shadow soul take you!”). This curse is unknown for most people nowadays, and word "íz" (in this meaning) is also unknown, or felt as an archaism
Archaism
In language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately or as part of a specific jargon or formula...
with forgotten meaning.
External links
See also homepage of author with other publications.Terebess Ázsia E-Tár:
- Bartha Júlia: A Kunság népi kultúrájának keleti elemei
- Lux Éva: Sámándobok és húsvéti tojások
Magyar Néprajz:
- Magyar Néprajz, chapter “Természetfeletti képességű emberek – tudósok és közetítők” (people of supernatural abilities – cunning people and mediators)
- Magyar Néprajz, chapter “Világkép” (world view)
- Magyar Néprajz, list of figures
: